War is male. Men decide on war, men manage war, men plan, conduct, and end wars. Men declare peace. In the world of war, a woman is an addition, a not very useful element, getting in the way, complicating things, getting emotional, crying, longing, being weak, being unnecessary, undermining the point of this masculine clash.
A woman in war loses her subjectivity becoming a trophy, a reward, something—a being halfway between an object and a man. We do not like to talk about it, we do not like to think about it; at most, we might escape into romanticizing war and women’s experiences. Honesty? We better give it up. There are so many people who might feel offended by such honesty. It is better to forget, move forward, and leave the evil behind us, as it surely will not return. Right?
In 1991, 46 years after the end of World War II, Hungarian psychologist Alaine Polcz published “One woman in the war.“ Polcz had previously published over 30 books, all related to her profession—psychology, therapy, and thanatology. However, the one that waited over four decades for publication was not a textbook for young psychology students. This book is the diary of a 19-year-old from a good family, a girl whose life falls apart along with the victorious and liberating march of the Red Army.
Polcz maintains the innocence and naivety of a young woman who had just been married (to an exceptionally selfish and whiny egocentric, by the way). She blushes at mentions of marital relations, loves her beautiful rooms in a wealthy bourgeois house, and, with the same naive diligence and vigor, describes the six months of nightmare that became her lot.
Fleeing the front, she separates from her family (her father stays in Transylvania, where, unbothered by anyone, he continues numerous affairs and maintains mistresses) and hides with her husband and mother-in-law in the palace of Count Esterhazy. However, each successive day brings a lowering of status, loss of property, as well as need to scheme and flee further.
Ultimately, she ends up in a cold, dirty basement where, along with other women, she becomes a slave to Red Army soldiers who rape them in groups of twenty, so much so that the mind stops counting the next ones kneeling between violently spread legs. “Death by rape” is common—the women’s legs are forcibly lifted and pressed to their chests by soldiers, causing their spines to break. Age does not matter, appearance does not matter, health does not matter; the only thing that matters is accessing the most delicate and sacred corner of a woman’s body—getting there, defiling and desecrating it.
If one were to compare “One woman in the war” with “A Woman in Berlin,” the diary of an anonymous 30-year-old German woman describing the horrors in the city after the Red Army’s entry, it is clear that the author of the second book is a more mature, calculating, and cynical woman who quickly realizes that surrendering to a higher-ranking officer will ensure her protection, peace from others, and perhaps even food.
Polcz does not lose that childlike enthusiasm and innocence, trying to explain and rationalize what happened to her (surely our soldiers did the same to “their women”), but also to explain the pervasive numbness (she is raped many times in the presence of others who turn their heads, happy that someone else is suffering this time). When she finally reunites with her family and tells them, her mother is convinced that her daughter is untouched, after all, she comes from a good family and has an education and a position. When she tries to tell her mother and family that yes, she too was a victim of rape, the denial and rejection are so strong that she gives up and admits: “You are right, Mom, no one touched me, harm only befell peasant women.”
In this inhuman time, the most humanity is shown to her by Feleke—a miniature dachshund, the pride of the hunting pack from the count’s palace, whom she managed to save. He is the only one who does not leave her side, licking her hands, warming her, caring for her. Fast forward—have we learned anything? Does “never again” really mean never again, or just “until the next time”?
We learn nothing from history, still repeating the same atrocities. Women are still trophies, in a state between an object and a man, a bargaining chip, a way to humiliate the enemy. Mass rapes during the war in former Yugoslavia, mass rapes during the Rwandan genocide, mass rapes of Yazidi women, mass rapes in the Central African Republic, and mass rapes of hostages kidnapped on October 7, 2023, by Hamas terrorists. Some of the women who died as a result of Hamas’s actions had fractured pelvises from the pressure and brutality.
We learn nothing from history; we only repeat it in a nightmare cycle of violence. Women are left with broken spines, broken pelvises, and broken lives.
Written by Magdalena M. Kaj-Chęcińska
The article was originally published in Polish at: https://liberte.pl/moja-wina-moja-wina-zawsze-moja-wina/
Translated by Natalia Banaś
